Pictures are a great way to capture memories, or at least parts of memories. But they don’t compare to actually being here. Nothing compares to being here, now. Whether now is good or bad, a picture misses most of it. We have five senses, a picture only captures one. The best a picture can do is remind us of how we felt, what we touched, how it smelled.

When you pull out your smartphone or your camera, make sure you’re present enough to know how you feel in the moment or the picture will only remind you of something you missed. Maybe that’s how we hide from feeling.

But isn’t that what we want people to do when they hear our songs? To feel, to smile, to laugh or cry with us? If we’re missing the feeling of the moment then we can’t capture that in a song. Be present and touch, taste, smell, hear. Being present generates songs and makes them more powerful. If you want to remember everything, you have to be present enough to take it all in. A picture won’t do.

“When we stop to post our own pictures, or scroll through someone else’s, we pay for those joys with the currency of our present.” – Marshall Segal (There Is No App for That – Are We Trading Our Present for Pictures?)